“It’s extremely tough to put into words. We had a team down and out and we just let them take over the game and climb out of a hole that they never should have come back from.’’

It would be too cruel to say that Dion Phaneuf was choking on those words. It would be too cruel to say that the Toronto Maple Leafs choked with the taste of victory in their mouths, barely a minute away from winning the Eastern Conference quarter-final against a team so ripe for the taking.

At 9:30, on a Monday night in May, the Leafs had a 4-1 lead over Boston.

And then: Did that really happen, what came next?

Nathan Horton scored at 9:18 of the third period and it was 4-2.

Milan Lucic scored at 18:39 and it was 4-3.

Patrice Bergeron scored at 19:09 and it was 4-4.

Within a span of — What? The time it takes to brush your teeth, to scramble an egg, to check your email — the roof had caved in, the Leafs had collapsed and there was no digging out of the rubble in overtime.

A listless crowd, ready to pitch-fork their Bruins out of the rink just half an hour earlier, was suddenly revived and shouting itself hoarse as the two teams went into their dressing rooms to ponder what had just transpired and it’s a toss-up which was more dumbfounded.

At 6:05 of OT, for Toronto, the bubble burst and the enchantment died, Bergeron the 5-4 slayer.

It had taken seven games of chronic stoning by James Reimer but Bergeron finally had his succulent revenge, his pound of Leaf flesh.

That was always the more likely outcome — just, mercy, not like this.

It will take a good long while for the hurt — and the mortification — to subside.

Let’s just grant that battered Boston — the city I mean — probably needs this jolt of elation a lot more than Toronto does.

But there was no putting any of it in perspective immediately afterwards, not in the Leafs dressing room, nor was there any escaping the reality of a monumental hockey convulsion: blowing a three-goal lead in the last 10 minutes of a Game 7.

Extreme … something, and Phaneuf kept landing on that one word to express his shock, his dismay, the team’s profound misery because, when it mattered most, when it seemed to be well in hand, as safe as houses, they let it slip away.

“You don’t pinpoint anything right now,’’ said the captain. “It’s extremely disappointing. Every guy really just … just …’’ Deep gulp. “Give Boston credit, they’re a team that played an extremely hard-fought series. We came into their building tonight, Game 7, played 55 minutes of really good hockey. It’s just, like I said, extremely disappointing any time a year comes to an end and this one is probably the toughest loss I’ve ever had in pro hockey.’’

Extreme: X marks the spot indeed where this series stumbled into a Twilight Zone worm hole, a staggering reversal of fortune.

Yet even at 4-4, in the dressing room awaiting OT, Leaf players believed the worse was over with and they still controlled their destiny.

“Before the overtime, in our room it was: What’s done is done. There was no feeling sorry for ourselves that we gave that lead back. We said we wanted to get back to playing our game. You know, Game 7 overtime, it came down to one shot. We said that in our room — that we had to re-group.’’

And they had their chances too.

Perhaps, in the frenzy of Game 7 overtime, it simply came down to experience after all. Boston had it, these Leafs didn’t, though they do now for what that’s worth.

“I think everyone watching, everyone involved … both teams played extremely hard, finished every check,’’ Phaneuf continued. “I’ve got a lot of respect for their team and how hard they played and I’ve got a lot of respect for how hard we played. That 55 minutes, we threw everything we had.’’

Except it’s a 60-minute game and sometimes, in the post-season, more than that, even when 60 minutes should have been enough — a fact Phaneuf was clearly having difficulties absorbing.

“We let a team that was down and out back into a game where it should never have happened.’’

Does it really matter, on this morning after, who was most at fault?

Not to them. If nothing else, they’ve learned to stand together and fall together.

“At the beginning of the season, we set out with a game plan of how we wanted to play as a team,’’ said Phaneuf, “how we wanted to change the culture and the identity of our team and I thought that we played hard all year for each other.’’

But this shock and dismay of this outcome — it had been right there, in the palm of their hand — left these Leafs reeling.

Reimer, in another corner of the small visitors’ dressing room, was trying to make sense of it, reliving the third and fourth goals, Boston’s thrust of the knife in the span of 31 seconds.

“One was cut across the slot and I tried to get across and I just couldn’t get to it. The last one was dumped through some traffic, I didn’t see the puck. When you’re up 4-1, you’d like to be able to hold on to that goal, obviously, and that’s not to take anything away from Boston. They played hard and with a lot of passion and they came with some pressure in the last 10 minutes. But especially as a goalie, you want to step up and try to make one more save in that situation.’’

Yet Reimer claims he didn’t feel the game getting away from him from 4-2 out. “You could feel the momentum, the atmosphere, but as a player it shouldn’t really change the way you play per say. I don’t know how the guys felt but for me, it was okay, 4-2, no big deal, you just keep focusing, know what I mean? You just keep bearing down and trying to make the next save.’’

Indeed, Reimer made a huge save with just a few ticks on the clock, otherwise there would have been no overtime at all.

Reimer did concede the heart-palpitating, throat-constricting stupefaction of it at 4-4. “When you’re up 4-1, you want to close that game out. At 4-4, there was a bit of shock maybe but at the same time we were saying to ourselves that we would have taken overtime this morning. So it’s no big deal how it got there, you can’t worry about that. The next shot could win the game. That’s how we tried to go out there.’’

That morning, Joffrey Lupul had urged: be a hero. Seize the stage, embrace the spotlight, and be very un-afraid.

“It’s good to want to be the hero,’’ Lupul had mused aloud. “Obviously you’re not just going to go out there and start playing an individual game or anything. But certainly you shouldn’t be afraid of big moments. I think every player should want to be the guy that makes a difference tonight. It’s time to not be afraid of a big moment.’’

They were not afraid and he was almost the guy.

So, most crucially, was young Cody Franson — both goat and hero on the same evening, actually within five minutes of the first period, the D-man committing an egregious error on a blind pass between his own legs that ended up directly on the stick of Providence call-up Matt Bartowski and in the Toronto net. Franson atoned, redemption-times-two on a brace of goals and Toronto continued to rack up the score, Phil Kessel and Nazem Kadri lifting Toronto into a 4-1 lead by 5:29 of the third.

Then the Earth shifted and the Leaf world tilted on its axis.

They fell off the edge.

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